


The Price

by NervousOtaku (orphan_account)



Series: Tales of a 144 Player Fansession! [8]
Category: Homestuck
Genre: Dreamselves, F/M, Friendship, Future Romance, Overdosing, SBURB Fan Session, Seer of Doom is a ballsucky Classpect, Temporary Character Death
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-04-02
Updated: 2017-04-02
Packaged: 2018-10-13 21:43:23
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 776
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10522485
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/NervousOtaku
Summary: Or: In Order To Be Considered Victorious, Sacrifices Must Be Made





	

Pygmalion ducked his head again, scowling.

Natasha couldn't help but giggle at his expression.

As she did, he blushed.

“You know, for such a gloomy guy, you're pretty funny!” she told him as they continued along the path.

“I wouldn't call myself _funny_...” Pygmalion replied, reaching up to scratch the back of his head. “More of morbid...”

“Aww, don't sell yourself short! You're really clever!” Natasha declared, swinging her hedgeclippers care freely by her side. Pygmalion watched them warily, so she stopped.

“It's not that I'm clever... it's that I can see how things go bad and know to avoid them...” he mumbled after a while.

“Oh, I meant aside from that! The one-liners you dropped on the monsters!”

“Underlings. The monsters are restricted to certain lands, designed as challenges for those Heroes, similar to the consorts.” Pygmalion corrected.

“Well, these underlings are still monstrous...” Natasha mused.

“But they're underlings rather than monsters.” the other Seer muttered, adjusting how he held his Necronomicon. Natasha had been really surprised when he had told her that was what it was. It looked less like the huge, rumpled tomes she'd seen in pop culture and the like, honestly appearing more like a high school guy's black book of names. The little bookmarks and placeholders even looked like those neon-colored sticky-notes you could get for a dollar at cheap convenience stores, and she _swore_ that was a blue erasable pen tucked into the pages.

The pages, of course, were what made it obviously the Book of the Dead. Natasha didn't want to know what the squirming glyphs and morphing pictures meant. The five seconds Pygmalion had let her look had revealed cosmic elephant dong, seething masses of tentacles making up some woman's head and exposed guts, and what looked like Egyptian hieroglyphs dancing to and fro. A quiet whispering and frantic jabbering had filled her ears while looking, and there'd been the odd sensation of being watched and standing on the edge of a vast pit, about to tip over. Natasha had no idea how Pygmalion was able to flip through the pages idly and calmly for ten minutes on end— thinking of what she had seen _still_ gave her the urge to tear her eyes out and split her tongue.

“... Hey...”

Natasha blinked, looking to Pygmalion.

He was captchaloguing the Necronomicon, shadows and smoke engulfing the book.

“Yes?” she replied, blinking.

“Your guardian... Doctor Coulson... he was a good guy. I saw him... not a lot, since I wasn't one of his patients, but frequently. A lot of people liked him.”

“Where did all this come from?” Natasha frowned, gripping her hedgeclippers.

“I... I'm sorry I couldn't save him. I was only able to save Joan, if you can call it that, and to do that I had to... betray him, in a way. So...”

“Hey, I don't like where this is going.”

Pygmalion ducked his head again, looking ashamed.

“Hey, Pyggy?”

“My head already hurts... Simply standing up... takes nearly all of my effort right now.” he announced into his chest.

“ _Wait_ , you're _sick?!_ ” Natasha demanded.

The Pandemonium-Modus spat something out into the Seer of Doom's hand. It was a plastic bag full of something.

“I like you. I'm doomed to fall in love with you... Self-fulfillment isn't very satisfying, you know? I knew I would do this... _years_ ago. I have no choice.”

He dropped the bag. Plastic water bottles and small orange containers rolled across the ground. Some were full, others empty, others half full.

“Oh my _god_ —”

“I... have no choice...” Pygmalion coughed.

He fell to his knees, head bobbing and swaying. Natasha knelt down next to him.

“You, you _idiot!_ Why would you do this?! _Why?!_ You have to throw up— no, it's too late, _shit_ , I don't know what to do...!”

“'S fine... I'll be... fine...” the Seer of Doom mumbled, leaning against her.

“Hey, hey, no! You can't do this! It was _you_ who said we _all_ need to survive this thing to win!” Natasha panicked as he shuddered and convulsed.

He didn't answer.

He wasn't moving.

He wasn't breathing.

Oh god oh god oh god oh god...

Natasha laid Pygmalion out flat on the path and pressed her lips to his. Wait, no, were the chest-compressions first? Shit, she was supposed to pinch his nose shut and tip his head back, wasn't she?

Fuck, she wasn't a doctor! She was a gardener! _Shit!_

He wasn't breathing, not breathing, not breathing, _fuck_ , his heart wasn't beating...

While Natasha struggled to revive her friend's corpse, a purple-clad dreamer threw a mocking rock at a black carapician on Derse, then fled into the moon.


End file.
